He left the message in an envelope in Garabedian's tent.

Mirsky drove the truck into the woods, heading for the as-yet-unexplored 180 point. There he could be alone, perhaps build a raft and pole across a shallow lake to a tree-covered island, or just explore the thick woods visible fifty kilometers directly overhead.

And he would decide what to do next.

He did not think he would return.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The flawship's interior, crowded with privileged citizens and dignitaries, was even more free-form than Olmy's craft. The surfaces varied from oyster pearl to abalone gray, and there seemed to be no edge or corner; only one spacious, long cabin, wrapped around the three-meter-wide flaw passage and propulsion machinery. People of a bewildering variety of body styles tracted from point to point in the cabin, exchanging picts or conversing in English or Chinese. Some sipped drinks from free-floating charged globules of fluid, which somehow managed to avoid passersby with both grace and anticipatory intelligence.

Lanier had barely gotten the hang of maneuvering with the traction fields. Farley seemed more adept—a natural gymnast, which caused him some chagrin. He applied himself more diligently to learning the skill. "This is lovely," she confessed, spinning slowly next to him, then reaching out and braking against the gently glowing violet sheet of a field.

Heineman and Carrolson helped each other along between the homorphs and neomorphs, smiling stiffly and nodding, hoping that—as Olmy had told them—they would find it almost impossible to do something socially unacceptable. Anything they did, any mistake they made, would be considered charming. They were, after all, "quaint."

Patricia tried to keep to herself, clutching her bag containing slate, processor and multi-meter. She was not in the least successful at being inconspicuous.

Suli Ram Kikura tracted toward Patricia and intercepted the rapid pictings of a man whose skin had the sheen of black hematite. The man apologized in a few simple picts for his assumption that Patricia knew the highest degrees of graphicspeak. Then, in moderately accomplished English—no doubt picked up in a quick gloss a few minutes before boarding—he launched into a complicated discussion of early terrestrial economics. Kikura had wandered off to smooth over another complication—Lanier was being determinedly, if slowly, pushed into a broad dimple by two lean and striking women. The women were dressed in full-length leotards with long, alternately stiff and supple fantails of fabric stretched between their legs and under their arms. They resembled fancy goldfish; there was little he or Farley could do to discourage them.

Patricia listened to the man's discourse for several minutes before saying, "I'm pretty ignorant about that. My specialty is physics."

The man stared at her and she could almost hear him switching over to a recently programmed portion of his implant. "Yes, that's fascinating. So much of physics was in ferment in your time—"